A very special thanks to Sir Digby who put together this story for us.
On his October 26 broadcast, Jon Stewart ran footage of peaceful, sanguine scenes from various Occupy Wall Street protests across the country before cutting to teargas, blood, and chaos on the streets of Oakland, California. “What the fuck happened in Oakland?” he asked. Stewart was speaking for many people when he puzzled over the raw anger and violence on display as cops attacked Occupy Oakland protesters with flash bang grenades, teargas, and less-lethal projectiles in Oakland. What made this city so different? What’s the matter with Oakland?
Roots and Crowns Oakland is a blue-collar, working class city still heavily reliant on industry and its port, the fifth busiest in the U.S. It’s a very diverse place, with African Americans and Latinos predominating. It’s a city that combines the brawny machismo and fatalism of an East Coast port city or midwestern factory town with the sun-lit irreverence of California. It is, most of all, a unique place — a small, “third-rate” city that cultivates and celebrates singular forms of music, dance, language, and fashion. It’s also a proud place. Long-time residents have a gruff sense of ownership of their city. Young artists and creative types fleeing the high rents of San Francisco and the dullness of the suburbs embrace this sense of working-class localism and young, upwardly mobile families take joy in a sort of defiant boosterism of the put-upon city.
This shared pride is well illustrated in the “Oaklandish” logo. A sort of people’s symbol of Oakland, it’s a black and white image of an Oak Tree with the root system as large and prominent and its leafy crown. This sticker can be seen on the bumpers of the city’s old Nissan pickups and brand new Subarus alike.
That’s not to say Oakland is one big happy family. In fact, its lines of class and race are written clearly in its geography. Some of the most expensive neighborhoods of the already expensive Bay Area can be found in Oakland, set into the leafy hills above the city. Below them are some of the most neglected, crime-ridden neighborhoods in the whole country; vast expanses of small bungalows, concrete-block apartment complexes, payday lenders, and liquor stores.
Land of the Panthers Oakland has a strong history of militant trade unionism like many other blue-collar cities. What makes it unique is the fiercely radical black activism that sprang up in the 1960s and ‘70s and which still permeates the culture here. The group that most defines this tradition is the Oakland-born Black Panthers, who are often caricatured and marginalized in our memory of them but who had, and continue to have, strong support from the local black community for their social programs and focus on police abuses. The Panthers were created, in fact, with the intention of defending Oakland’s black citizens from police violence. The tradition of radical politics defined by the Panthers continues today and you would be hard pressed to find a city with a more strongly defined political consciousness than Oakland.
Another unique factor is Oakland’s shared border with Berkeley, which has its own, more academic, culture of political radicalism. In times of heightened political activism, ideas and people flow quickly and freely up and down Telegraph Avenue, from the classrooms of Berkeley to the streets and union halls of Oakland and back.
A Necessary Evil at Best It’s hard to find anyone in Oakland with something good to say about the police. Many working-class people of color would just as soon they leave, viewing them as an occupying force that sucks up scarce city resources and spits out abuse and humiliation in return. Many wealthy residents of the hills, concerned primarily with the politics of law and order, view them as corrupt and incompetent. Pretty much everyone else views them, in the words of the embittered departing Police Chief Anthony Batts, as “a necessary evil” at best.
There are a few scandals one can point as contributing to this distrust and disgust directed towards the police. In a 1968 confrontation with Oakland police, founding member of the Black Panthers Bobby Hutton, stripped bare to show he was unarmed but was still filled with over a dozen bullets fired by the OPD. In the late ‘90s a group of Oakland officers calling themselves the “Rough Riders” tortured and planted evidence on suspects. The sloppy investigation of the murder of Chauncey Bailey and the botched 1999 raid to apprehend cop killer Lovelle Mixon contributed to a perception of gross incompetence up and down the OPD’s chain of command.
But, for most citizens of Oakland, animosity towards the police is a result of day-to-day interactions and not any particular headline-grabbing event. The face of the OPD is often a white one from the suburbs ringing the Bay Area. It’s a face that is often tense and filled with dislike and apprehension. It’s the face of an outsider with nearly unlimited power over you.
In 2010, BART police officer Johannes Mehserle was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter after shooting an unarmed and prone black man, Oscar Grant, on an Oakland subway platform. The city exploded in anger. At one demonstration, then-city council member Jean Quan stood between riot police and protestors in an attempt to keep the peace. This incident endeared Quan to community activists and made her an enemy at Police Headquarters and among the Law and Order crowd in and around Oakland. That November, Quan was elected as Mayor of Oakland based largely on her history of community activism. Which made it all the more shocking when, on October 26 of this year, she gave the go ahead for a pre-dawn raid of the Occupy Oakland site in front of Oakland City Hall.
The raid was conducted by a huge contingent of riot police, including officers called in from numerous local agencies. It was executed in a manner completely out-of-proportion to the threat posed by the people camped in Frank Ogawa Plaza (renamed Oscar Grant Plaza by the protestors). Downtown Oakland was lit up with the flashes of stun grenades and the loud boom of teargas canisters being fired as police stormed into the sleepy, tent-filled square.
Later that night, an estimated 3,000 people marched to retake Oscar Grant Plaza and to protest the excessive police force used that morning. It was a diverse crowd consisting of many people who were not regular visitors to the Occupy Oakland site. This peaceful march was again met with excessive police force. In a now well-known incident, Iraq War vet Scott Olsen was hit in the head with a police-fired projectile. Outraged and frightened, nearby protestors rushed to carry Olsen to safety. The police responded by hurling a teargas canister at them. Olsen remains in the hospital with a fractured skull and possible brain damage.
Where was Quan during all this? Washington D.C. At first silent about the incident, Quan eventually tried to distance herself from the events, saying that while she gave the go ahead to clear the park, she “didn’t know everything.” At the same time, she seemed to defend the police’s actions and deny that excessive force was used.
A general strike – the first in the United States since the 1940s – was called for November 2. A plan quickly developed to shut down the Port of Oakland as a show of popular force. Quan made the right decision by restraining the police for the day’s events. Though they sent out a bitchy open letter to Quan complaining about her “mixed messages,” police officers were few and far between and a crowd of 10,000 plus made their voices heard with few incidents of violence. The Port of Oakland was filled with union members in t-shirts identifying their local, families with kids in strollers, people walking their dogs, young people, old people — all happy and excited to be participating in that historic day.
Early the next morning, however, a group of Occupiers decided to take over a vacant building that had been used to shelter the homeless. They planned to return it to that purpose. Outside, barricades were erected and a large bonfire built. This was too much for the police to ignore and they showed up in force, again firing projectiles and teargas. Protestors scattered and a small group rampaged across downtown Oakland, spraying graffiti and breaking windows.
That night, the police also managed to send a second Iraq War vet to the hospital. Kayvan Sabehgi, who owns a popular bar in the area, was trying to leave the chaotic scene and found himself face-to-face with a line of riot police. They told him to leave and he responded that he was trying to but had no other way of exiting the area. In a resulting confrontation, Sabehgi was thrown roughly to the ground and claims to have been beaten with batons. Taken to jail, Sabehgi says that he was denied medical treatment for 18 hours. He is now in the hospital with a lacerated spleen.
Where Now? Quan continues to please no one and anger everyone, saying that she supports the occupiers’ message and refusing for now to send the police back into Oscar Grant Plaza. At the same time, she complains about the protestors and echoes the Chamber of Commerce’s assertion that the protest is hurting local business and destroying local jobs. The pathetically small-minded San Francisco Chronicle is reinforcing this complaint, with daily stories about local entrepreneurs afraid of moving into downtown Oakland.
Most insulting is frequent suggestions by city officials and the Chronicle that protestors do not care about Oakland. This in a place where people tattoo their love of their city onto their body and where “Let’s Go, Oakland!” is one of the most common chats heard at Occupy rallies.
Meanwhile, Occupy Oakland is continuing to propose actions not seen in other cities. There is currently much discussion about taking over foreclosed buildings and returning them to families or otherwise repurposing them. The question of how Mayor Quan and the police might respond to such actions is a pressing one.
One of the most interesting things about Occupy Wall Street is that, as it has spread out from Manhattan, local sites have incorporated local concerns into their protests. Anger about police abuse and corruption was always simmering under the surface at Occupy Oakland. After the police violence on October 26, these concerns came to the fore. Occupiers in other cities frequently remind each other that the police are not the enemy – that the 1% rigging the system against the 99% is the real enemy. You don’t hear that argument much in Oakland. Long-standing anger towards the police makes protests for social justice here immediate and volatile. The enemy, it can seem, is staring you right in the face.
Image via Wikimedia Commons.
